Stand Still- Chapter Two: I Hated Them, but I am Them.
Summary: Luke and Lorelai broke up after her parents wedding, then she left Stars Hollow when Mike Armstrong offered her that job. But now shes back in town, 5 years later, to give Luke something, only to find that he is a very changed man and there's something he isn't telling her. What's he hiding and what will she do when she finds out?
Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls or any of it's characters. I only write this for fun and don't make any money off of it or anything like that.
Rating: pg13 just to be safe
Thank you so much to all who reviewed:
JoEySaNgEl1534: good guesses, you'll find out one of his secrets in this chapter, so read on and review.
nicole: your in luck, his big secret is out in this chapter. review and tell me what you think.
snowlight24: thanks so much. hope you enjoy this chapter. r&r
orangesherbert7: wow thx for the long review. as for the part about luke when lorelai comes to the diner, i had it your way originally. i have no idea why I changed it, i agree with you, though, i probably should have kept it. one of lukes secret is out in this chapter soo read and review.
GGFAN6: thanks so much. i'll have to check out some of your stories. hope you like this chapter, read and review.
muffin aux carottes: we'll see...but you're right, they are Luke and Lorelai... Next part is here soo R&R.
The27thGilmore: good guesses, you'll find out in this chapter.R&R!
ArcadiaX091: like they say, great minds think alike. You'll find out one of Luke's secrets below, so read and review! I'm curious what you think is going to happen,
Lukelorelaichick: Well, here's the new chapter, I hope I didn't take too long. I have few more chapters written sort of, i still need to edit them and stuff, but so it shouldn't take me too long to update this story. reviews motivate me thooo so R&R!
tom: great guesses, you find out one of Luke's secrets in this chapter. R&R!
Franala: Say It Ain't So, great song by Weezer. Yeah, anyway, you'll find of one of Luke's secrets in this chapter and also who the stranger is. Hope you enjoy it. Tell me what you think.
oth2007: thanks, and here's my update. Tell me what you think!
LorelaiAnderson: Thank you. I updated, enjoy and tell me how it was!
Anyway, thanks so much for the reviews, some people are pretty close to guessing Luke's secrets, and some even had very similar ideas to me. I love reading all of your reviews, sokeep umcoming!
We'll see what happens...I hope you guys like this. Please review when your done. Oh and don't worry, I love happy endings...
"How long have you been in town?" Sookie asked. Lorelai had been at Sookies for about 10 minutes, and after all the screams and the jumping up and down, they finally were sitting at the kitchen table talking.
"20, 30 minutes maybe? I stopped by Luke's first. I had to give him something." Lorelai said,
Sookie was silent and just stared at her best friend, that she hadn't seen in five long years. She didn't think she would ever see her again, but here she was, "You look good, Lorelai." She said after a long time.
"I am. I mean, I'm back and it feels great. I love this town. I love these crazy people. I love the random parties and holidays. And I love how this town looks when it's snowing. It's nothing like New York. This town is like a fairytale. I missed it." Lorelai smiled knowing how stupid she sounded but not really caring.
"Speaking of parties, are you going on Saturday?" Sookie asked.
"Is there a party on Saturday?" She asked.
Sookie froze. Lorelai didn't know.
"You saw Luke right?" Sookie asked. She said she stopped by Luke's, he had to have told her.
"Yeah, I just left from there, but I think he'd be the last person to know about a party," Lorelai laughed. "He hates those things."
"Yeah.." Sookie said.
"He did seem kind of weird, though, do you know what's up with him?" Lorelai asked.
"Nope," Sookie said even though she knew exactly what was up with him.
Lorelai shrugged and forgot about it.
"Do you think he would forgive me?" She asked.
"What?" Sookie was confused.
"Do you think he'd be able to forgive me, and you know...try again?" Lorelai said.
Sookie was stuck. Why didn't Luke tell her?
"Oh...I don't know, honey." Sookie said. She wished they would change the subject.
"What's up with his clothes?" Lorelai asked.
"I think he looks nice." Was all Sookie thought to say. She had an idea as to why he changed his clothes, everyone in the town had their owntheories, no one knew the truth.
"He does look great. But those clothes, they aren't him."
"Well, he's changed, Lorelai." Sookie said. Why didn't Luke tell her? She's going to find out, and it should be from him.
"Maybe...He didn't seem different. He'll always be the same ol' Luke to me." Lorelai said smiling.
Sookie faked a smile. Lorelai looked so happy. She hated thinking about how she would be after she found out.
"Oh and he bought a house?" Lorelai asked.
Sookie froze again. What could she say to that? Why didn't Luke just tell her? Why did he have to put me through this?
"Umm...yeah." She said.
"Where?" Lorelai asked.
Oh God, she couldn't tell her.
"Oh, I don't know." Sookie lied.
Lorelai began to think there was something that no one was telling her. She was a little bit suspicious when she talked to Luke, but she didn't think too much of it. But now... Everyone was being kind of secretive and careful around her, not answering her questions with real answers.
"What's going on, Sookie?"
"What do you mean?"
Lorelai shrugged. She wasn't going to spill, all these years where Sookie couldn't keep a secret and now...well, I guess some things have changed.
Lorelai left Sookie's around 6 and walked around town since it had stopped snowing and it had gotten a little warmer outside. Then she decided to look in the movie store. She hadn't seen many movies lately because of her job, and even though she wouldn't watch any at the Inn, she still wanted to go in and see it.
She walked in and there was that familiar smell, the smell of popcorn and the cologne that one of the guys at the counter always wore. She smiled. She missed that smell.
As she strollled around the store, she thought.
She was surprised today, when she drove into Stars Hollow everything looked completely the same. It looked almost exactly the same as it did the day she left. This was Stars Hollow, it wasn't supposed to change.
She wasn't expecting this. Sure, she didn't think everything would be normal and exactly the same, she'd been gone for five years. But she didn't expect any of this,everything seemed a little out of place. Almost nothing was the same. It looked the same from the outside, but it wasn't. Everything had changed, atleast a little bit. Even Luke seemed a little different, but also exactly the same, minus his new outfit. It was a hard thing to explain. He was the same in the ways that, he still looked at her with that same look, the one that she could never really figure out but she loved it anyway. He smiled at her the same way, and he laughed with her like they didn't have this crazy history and they were still really great friends, maybe more. But, there was also something that was different, something she didn't know how to explain. Luke seemed simple, but he was always a hard person to explain or figure out.
Today, he seemed nervous, but not that normal Luke nervous that he used to be when they started dating. She knew that kind of nervous and that wasn't it. He acted like he was hiding something from her, something he really didn't want her to find out. But what could it be? And why couldn't he just say it? What could it possibly be that he couldn't tell her?
Suddenly her thoughts were interupted.
"Are you OK?" A skinny blonde woman asked. She was a little shorter than Lorelai and had bright green eyes. Lorelai had never seen her before, but that wasn't surprising. Afterall she had been gone for five years.
"Oh, yeah I'm fine." Lorelai laughed at herself.
"Well you just seemed a little worried." She said. Lorelai noticed the Luke's cup she was holding.
"Luke's. They serve the most amazing coffee." Lorelai smiled.
The woman nodded. "Yeah, my fiance works there." She said.
"Oh really? Is it Caesar? Or somebody new?" Lorelai asked.
"No, actually, it's the owner, Luke." She said.
Lorelai froze. She felt like her heart was in her throat, or maybe in her stomach. She couldn't even tell. She couldn't think or talk or anything. This was why he was acting so strange. This is what he didn't want her to know. This is what Sookiewas hiding. Luke was engaged.
"L-Luk-Luke?" Lorelai asked barely getting that one word out of her mouth. "Luke Danes? He used to wear flannel shirts everyday and he would always wear a backwards baseball hat, he doesn't let you have more than three cups of coffee, he-he doesn't shave and..." She was interupted
"Yes. We're getting married in three weeks." She smiled.
"Oh. Well, um, con-congradulations." Lorelai said having a hard time trying to fight off the tears. But luckily the woman didn't notice. Three weeks? He was getting married in three weeks. She could feel her throat tensing up and her heart beating faster and faster. She wanted to cry, but she couldn't.
"I haven't seen you around here before." The woman stated. "I'm Rebecca." She said nicely.
"I'm Lorelai." She said having a hard time breathing.
"Lorelai?" She said in a very surprised tone. "The Lorelai?"
"Well, I guess so. I mean my daughter's name is Lorelai, even though she goes by Rory and my grandmother's name is Lorelai, but she died a few years ago..." She said trying to not burst out in tears like she felt she was going to do at any moment.
"I thought you left," she said suddenly losing her sweet act and becoming a litte cold.
"I came back." Lorelai said. How did she know about her and how she left? She wondered if Luke talked about her a lot. She wondered what he said about her, was it good or was it bad?
"For good?"
"I'm not sure." Lorelai stated. She didn't want to think about leaving here again, she wanted to stay. She didn't want to say goodbye anymore. But how could she stay here and watch Luke get married to someone besides her?
"Oh." was all she could say.
"I have to go." Lorelai said. "Please don't tell Luke you saw me or talked to me or anything. I want to talk to him about this on my own."
"He didn't tell you?"
"No."
With that Lorelai left the store and walked over to Luke's where her car still was. She got inside and turned on the engine. Then she turned to see him. He was washing down the tables like he always did around 8 o'clock. She watched him for awhile, wondering what he was thinking. Was he thinking about her? Was he thinking about Rebecca?
Atleast she knew what everyone was hiding from her. And tomorrow it could all be out in the open.
Luke was restless. He was anxious, he was nervous. He had no idea what to do. Everytime the bell on the door rang he looked up waiting for Lorelai. It was kind of how it used to be. Before they went out, before things got hard, before he got engaged again. He used to wait for her to come, he'd look forward to it. She's come in begging for coffee, and he would say no, and then she would make some joke or movie refrence, and he'd still say no. Then she would look at him in the way, and he knew he wasgone, and he'd poor her the coffee. He liked it, how she needed him, even if it was only for coffee.
He had always wondered if he'd ever see her again, and now that he had, it wasn't at all what he expected. Of course he knew it wouldn't be. Lorelai wasn't the predictable type.
But he was engaged. He was getting married, in three weeks. He was getting married to Rebecca who was a beautiful, smart woman. He had to stop thinking about Lorelai. They were over so long ago. She was over it and he had to be, too. He had to tell her, and it had to be today.
While he was completely zoned out he hadn't noticed that Lorelai came in and was now sitting in front of him.
"Hi." She said and he jumped.
"You scared me." He said.
She nodded.
"So...Luke Danes is finally tying the knot. Who would have thought?" She said. She hated the way it sounded. It sounded like something Taylor or her mother would say. She sounded cold, and sarcastic. She wished she hadn't said it.
He was silent.
"So I'm walking around the movie store, and this woman just starts talking to me. I notice that she has a Luke's cup in her hand so I said something about it. Then she starts telling me about how she's engaged to someone who works there. Now I didn't think she was exactly Caesars type, and I didn't think Lane went lesbian and I also doubt that she's still working here so, I asked her who it was. And she said Luke...Now I know that I haven't been here in five years and for all that I know there could be some other Luke, you know, he helpscook, or organizes the storage room, or maybe he's in charge of putting the chairs on the tables at the end of the day. But then, she said that he was the owner... Why didn't you tell me?"
"I didn't know how." Luke said.
"What?"
"Lorelai, I haven't seen or heard from you for five years and then you just randomly show up. I wasn't going to be like 'oh hey Lorelai, I'm getting married,'"
"Why not?"
"Because."
"Because why?"
"We have a history, Lorelai. If Nicole or Rachel showed up here I wouldn't just randomly tell them that I was getting married." Luke said, but as he said it, he realized something. If Nicole or Rachel had shown up when Lorelai did, he would have told them. He would have told them and it wouldn't have been a big deal.
So why was this so hard?
"Oh I'm sorry. I guess I was wrong. I always kind of thought that I was different from them. You know, different then those other girls. But I guess I'm not, I mean now I'm just in their category." She said in a horrible tone, but she was angry.
Things were silent. Lorelai was angry, but suddenly her anger changed to saddness.
"I always hated them, Luke... I hated them because they hurt you... but I hurt you, too. I'm just like them... I'm sorry that I came. I'm sorry about all of this. I was so stupid to think you'd give me a second chance. You deserve so much better then me. You deserve someone who won't screw up..." She said.
"Lorelai..." Luke said.
"No. Look, this was only supposed to be about giving you your money back. It wasn't even supposed to be about us again...I just saw you and I thought...I don't know what I thought. I'm sorry." And with that she left.
It was next afternoon. It was almost 4:00. Luke looked out the window. She was still out there. Lorelai had been sitting in the gazebo for almost 4 hours. He couldn't take it.
She had no idea how long she had been out there, probably awhile, but she didn't really know exactly how long. She just wanted to think, she wanted some quiet. She didn't want to sit in the Inn all day. She didn't like it there. It was completely different. That was her Inn and she didn't like feeling like a guest in her own Inn.
"Hey." he said. She knew who it was. She wasn't exactly surprised that he came over. She knew that he would notice her sitting out there. She hoped he wouldn't, but she knew he would.
"I brought coffee," he offered it to her.
"You know me too well." She said. She hated how awkward the two of them were. They used to be so close, like best friends, like family, but now they couldn't even talk to each other without things being completely awkward.
"We should talk," he said sitting beside her.
"I know," she said quietly.
"Everything you said was wrong, Lorelai."
"What?" she asked, looking up at him. It was the first time she had really looked at him since she came back. Sookie was right, he was different, very different. She didn't exactly know how or why he was different, but she could see it. He had changed.
"You didn't screw up, Lorelai. And you have always been more important to me than Rachel and Nicole. I missed you a lot when you were gone. It was a really hard year, every little thing reminded me of you. And that letter-"
"You got it?" She knew he did, how could he not? It was duct taped to his door, a tornado couldn't have gotten it off.
"Yeah. It took me about an hour to get it off my door."
"I didn't want it to fly away."
"So you had to use an entire roll of duct tape?" He asked.
They were silent.
"I'm sorry." He told her.
"For what?"
"For not telling you. I just didn't know how. I guess I always thought that you would be the one, you know, so it was hard." He said.
"What? I'd be the one what?" She asked.
"I kind of always thought that we would get married."
"You did?"
"Yeah, so it was just weird...telling you, I mean. I really am sorry." He said.
She sighed. She had hoped for more than that, more than just an apology. But, he was getting married, and there was no way that he was goingto just cancel thewedding to be with someone who had already broken his heart once, and dump someone who was there for them and probably didn't screw up like she had.
"I really want things to be how they used to." He said.
"How they used to?" She asked.
"Yeah you know, friends." he said. He saw her dissapointment, but he had to ignore it.
"Friends." she repeated.
"Really good friends," he said.
She smiled a little bit, "OK." She said and hugged him. There was that smell, that Luke smell. It was undescribable, but amazing. It smelled a little bit like the dinner but also something else, something really good. She didn't want to let go, but she knew she had to.
"So, did you get down on one knee?" Lorelai said.
"What?"
"When you proposed, did you get down on one knee? I just can't imagine it, I'm trying to, but I have nothing," she said. She was trying really hard to look like she was OK. She didn't really want to know how he proposed, but she couldn't help but ask.
"Actually. I didn't exactly propose."
"She proposed? Oh wow, Luke Danes, I bet the town didn't let you live that down." She tried to act funny, like her old self, but she couldn't. It was hard to act like nothing was wrong when almost everything was.
"She didn't propose, she just kind of started talking about it, and well, here we are." He said. He said it a little nervously, knowing how stupid and weird it sounded.
"So you didn't propose?"
"No." That somehow made her feel so much better, that it wasn't his idea to get married. He didn't ask her, there were no flowers or candles or getting down on one knee, just a conversation, a plain conversation.
"So how's the Inn?" he asked.
"Ugh, it's so horrible. Nothing is the same. I hate it." She said.
"Well you still can stay at the diner, it's really no problem. I mean, there's only a bed, a couch and a bathroom. But there's free coffee downstairs."
"OK." She said. For some reason being in his old apartment made her feel closer to him. "Anything is better than that Inn. I can't stand all the changes."
"Good, I'll help you bring your stuff over."
"OK."
They both stood there staring at each other for a few minutes until Luke finally broke eye contact, "Let's go," he said.
"Hey, Luke?"
"Yeah?"
"What did you tell Rebecca about me?"
"Um nothing really, why?"
"Well I told her my name and she kind of flipped out, she sounded like she knew all about me."
"I didn't say anything, I mentioned you, but I didn't give her your life story or anything."
"Well then how did she know who I was?"
"I don't know."
Well- next chapter: Lorelai moves into the apartment above the diner. Luke goes through some old things and remembers his past. Also conversations with Sookie, Babette, and Kirk help Lorelai decide what she's going to do.
How is everyone liking this? I'd love the feedback, good or bad, I want people to like it. As always ideas/comments/suggestions wanted.